Brig Nasir Saeed Khattak (Retd), SI(M)
Current Principal
Brig Nasir Saeed Khattak (Retd), SI(M) – Principal
Established in 1954 as Pakistan’s first cadet college, Cadet College Hasanabdal has, for over seven decades, set the standard for high-quality residential education for boys. Built on the British Public School tradition — disciplined, demanding, and deeply purposeful — CCH has always aimed beyond the classroom: to shape young men of character, competence, and conviction.
Our foundations remain unchanged. Academic excellence, character development, personality shaping, universal values, and citizenship are not aspirations at CCH — they are the lived daily reality of every cadet who passes through our gates. The structured, immersive environment of a full boarding school operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, forming not just scholars but leaders.
What has changed is our horizon.
Since 2019, CCH has embarked on a deliberate transformation — aligning itself with the demands of a globalised, interconnected world while remaining true to the values that have defined it for 71 years. We have transitioned to a 100% Cambridge curriculum. We have built a research culture that sends students to the International Science and Engineering Fair in the United States, the International Biology Olympiad, and the International Greenwich Olympiad in London. We have established a Guidance and Placement Cell that places graduates at the University of Chicago, NYU Abu Dhabi, NYU Shanghai, and the world’s leading universities on merit and scholarship. Our Cambridge Outstanding Learner Awards represent the largest national school representation in Pakistan. Our students have won the King Constantine Medal — Round Square’s highest individual honour — in two consecutive years.
We have done all of this while maintaining the principle that distinguishes CCH from every other top-performing school in Pakistan: our admissions are All-Pakistan, open-merit, and need-blind. Every cadet who enters these gates is here because of what he is capable of — not because of where he comes from or what his family can afford. One in three cadets receives a scholarship. That has been true since our founding document of 1954, and it remains true today.
The Abdalian family now spans 74 entries and over seven decades. Our alumni serve as Chiefs of Naval Staff, Federal Ministers, Ambassadors, senior civil servants, and leading professionals across medicine, technology, law, and business — in Pakistan and across the world. They climb Nanga Parbat, publish in Stanford’s journals, direct research institutes, and lead corporations. The Abdalian is recognisable not by what he has achieved but by how he achieves it: with discipline, integrity, and an instinctive drive to excel.
CCH’s ambition for the years ahead is clear. We are building a globally competitive international boarding school — one that is formally accredited, internationally recognised, and capable of producing graduates who can compete for, and win, places, only only at the World’s finest universities, but also be life-ready and future-proof. We are developing a Global Visiting Faculty Programme to bring outstanding international educators to our campus. We are pursuing Council of International Schools accreditation. We are expanding our research culture, our international competition footprint, and our university placement pipeline.
But our most important commitment is the one we have always held: that the best education in Pakistan should be available to the most capable students in Pakistan — regardless of their postcode or their parents’ income. In a country where educational opportunity is too often determined by wealth, CCH is proof that merit, properly supported, produces extraordinary results.
It is with both humility and justified pride that we carry the motto — Second to None.
Brigadier Nasir Saeed Khattak, (Retd) SI(M)
Principal, Cadet College Hasanabdal